Bolivarianism and Caracas

Research Questions/Intro

Socialism is portrayed in many ways in the United States, mostly in a negative light, however there are many Latin American countries that have at one point in their history been socialist. One of the more recent examples of this is Venezuela, with Hugo Chavez at the helm. In 1993, Chavez won the presidency of Venezuela and took the country in a leftward direction, leading us to two research questions: What is Bolivarianism? How was Caracas involved in Bolivarianism?

This is an image of citizens walking past election posters promoting Hugo Chavez in his first election. Found on Shutterstock, contributed by Jose Caruci/AP/Shutterstock. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Jose Caruci/AP/Shutterstock (7312270a)

This picture was drawn in 2000, and signed by Hugo Chavez. Found on the Google Arts and Culture Website, originally uploaded by Yuan Xikun in 2001.

News Article about Hugo Chavez from 2007. Picture found on the Google Arts and Culture Website, provided by Gilberto Gil’s Private Archive. Additional copyright information contained within the image.

Narrative/Overview

The audience for this research kit would most likely be students taking a 300-level Latin America or Venezuelan history class in college, and the professors who would assign it. This research kit will present two research questions and then the explanation to the answers of them, so most likely a professor would take the research questions and the sources provided, do their own research and collect their own findings, using this kit as a reference, and assign it to their students without the narrative / overview section. 

This kit will expand knowledge about a popular topic, being socialism, in an underrepresented section of history academia. Latin America is not only neglected, but often ignored. According to the Pew Research Center, 42% of Americans viewed socialism positively in 2019, while 65% still viewed capitalism positively, making this a popular topic. For the History Major at JMU, there are only two classes available that are focused on Latin America, making this corner of history academia very underrepresented.

Bolivarianism is a branch of socialism that believes in cooperativism, where communities come together to solve problems on both the local and larger levels . This system is designed to help primarily the lower and middle classes through what Chavez called “Bolivarian Missions.” In Venezuela, Chavez’s application of Bolivarianism was inspired by the nationalist freedom ideals of the War for Independence the Venezuela fought against Spain in 1961. Pedro Sanoja, writing for the Bulletin of Latin American Research in 2009 explains Bolivarianism as drawing from 3 separate sources, Simon Bolivar, Ezequiel Zamora, and Simon Rodriguez, centered around Bolivar for his beliefs on freedom and democracy, as well as his desire for a centralized Venezuela, and a belief in representative government checked by a constitution and a system of checks and balances. Zamora was included in this trinity due to his belief in social justice and in uniting the army and the peasantry, which exemplifies the “Bolivarian intention of righting centuries of class-based oppression.” Simon Rodrigues was included in this trinity due to the fact that he was Bolivar’s tutor, and he impressed upon Bolivar that Venezuela “cannot and should not” emulate European governance, and emphasized nation-wide education as a matter of great importance. Before Bolivarianism, there was a profound lack of material needs met for Venezuelans, which was made worse by the neo-liberal policies enacted by the president in the late 80s and the 90s, Carlos Perez, which lead to greater social inequalities, higher poverty rates, less government spending on social issues, and skyrocketing inflation from 1990-1998, which in turn led to grassroots organizations leading the charge against not only the political parties of the time but the ideologies behind them. From 1989 to 1998, protests in Caracas became a much more common occurrence, and as the 90s went on they became more and more violent, as inflation and material conditions got worse. As the 1998 election loomed in closer, Hugo Chavez was a prominent political figure, mostly due to his involvement in the MBR-200 military revolt, and he was set to win the election, which he did, and he launched the country into a Bolivarian social democratic system.

Life in Caracas during the Bolivarian government of Chavez’s presidency was not good. Caracas suffered from many of the  problems that the Bolivarian  government had to deal with. In “Neighbors,” a 2004 poem written by Susanne Kort when she was living in Caracas, she discusses how the neighborhood used to be full of life, with children running around, adults singing and drinking, and life being easier, but now it was barren, childless, and devoid of life.

By 2012, much of the city had extensive slums and serious administration problems. The Petare municipality had about 1 million residents and was one of the largest slums, with about 30% of the population living in poverty. One of the quotes used in “Challenges and Opportunities of Waste Collection in Caracas: Sucre Municipality Case Study” described the situation in the slums perfectly, stating “when night falls, we are greeted with violence, with the onset of morning we are welcomed with the garbage,” showing that the government under Chavez was unable to control simple municipal problems like garbage collection, but also unable to tackle larger problems like gang violence and slums.

Another look into Caracas’s problems comes from Benjamin Goldfrank, in his book Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America: Participation, Decentralization, and the Left, from chapter 3, entitled “Caracas: Scarce Resources, Fierce Opposition, and Restrictive Design.” This chapter discusses many of the issues in Caracas. Bolivarian cooperativismo social programs became incredibly hard to implement, since due to the bad conditions and a general feeling of underrepresentation in government, the people in Caracas were unwilling to participate and the existing political parties, while not dominant anymore, were still fairly powerful and blocked many attempts for these programs to work.

Caracas had a large wealth disparity between the rich and the poor that was offset by Venezuela’s oil market, described in Alexandra Starr’s 2007 “Letter from Caracas: Living Large on Oil.” The upper-middle class lives extremely comfortable lives, driving Range Rovers, drinking expensive aged whiskey, buying designer clothes, and getting copious amounts of plastic surgery, all made possible by the high price of oil and the largest non-Middle Eastern oil reserve, found in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the poor in Caracas were living off of 2 dollars a day, but even they were in on the benefits of the oil market, receiving many free social services, including optometry and literacy classes. Supermarkets had quality goods for low prices, doctors saw all patients for free, and the government would provide starting capital for cooperative businesses. However, this system was entirely reliant on one export, oil, which was finite and in a very unstable market, and this prosperity was not going to last. In 2002, with oil prices plummeting, all these great services failed, the rich were unhappy, and protests broke out violently and came to meet Chavez’s forces resulting in many dead protesters and counter protesters, and Chavez was forced to leave office, lest he be forcibly removed. Once again, the elites were in control, and life did not improve for the poor, once again leading to protests promoting Chavez’s return to office, and soon he did return.

This project could be taken in a multitude of directions. A student writing a research paper would look further into the wealth disparity, or further into the cooperativismo ideal and Chavez’s Bolivarian Missions, or further into how bad Venezuela was when Chavez died in 2013. There are a couple ways to take this project, and I intentionally left out information so that it could be developed into other research papers.

This research kit changed a lot. Originally, I wanted to look at families coming through the Mexican-U.S. border, where they settled, and what kind of lives they were leading. I decided against this due to the difficulty of finding this information, since many of these families do not immigrate legally and therefore tend to not report their stories. I then wanted to focus on socialism in Latin America in general, however I decided that that was too broad. I then settled on Venezuela, since I knew previously it had socialist policies at one point in its history. My original question centered on Hugo Chavez in general, and then I narrowed it down to Bolivarianism in general, since that would cover a lot of the important build up to Chavez’s time. During this, I decided to focus my primary sources mostly on Caracas, since that would give me a city to focus on and provide insight into the actual city. 

Primary Sources Annotated Bibliography

1. Kort, Susanne. “Neighbors (Caracas).” Prairie Schooner 78, no. 3 (2004): 164–164. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40637945.
   1. This source provides a very interesting look into the life of Caracas during the Bolivarian government. While only being one page, it discusses how the past, before Chavez’s rise, life was good; people would have families, relax, and have fun together, but after his rise, the city fell into poverty and slums. It shows the failure of Chavez to implement his practices.
2. Ramos, Camille, Adriana Vicentini, and Daniela Ortega. “Challenges and Opportunities of Waste Collection in Caracas: Sucre Municipality Case Study.” Consilience, no. 7 (2012): 115–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26167841.
   1. This source also describes one in specific of the challenges within Chavez’s government. In his own capital, he cannot get a handle on many things that most countries do perfectly fine, like trash collection.
3. GOLDFRANK, BENJAMIN. “Caracas: Scarce Resources, Fierce Opposition, and Restrictive Design.” In Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America: Participation, Decentralization, and the Left, 84–120. Penn State University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.5325/j.ctv14gp2fj.10.
   1. This source was useful to describe the cooperativismo programs, and I feel that a student actually writing a research paper could benefit extremely well from this source. It covers the time period right before what I addressed in this research kit, but it still provides useful insight.
4. Starr, Alexandra. “Letter from Caracas: Living Large on Oil.” The American Scholar 76, no. 2 (2007): 7–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41222679.
   1. This source was very beneficial. It talked about the wealth disparity throughout the Chavez years in Caracas, which was extremely relevant to my kit. Both the rich and the poor benefited from the oil boom, however the poor tended to suffer more during down periods, due to the nature of the economic system set up in Venezuela.
5. Nadeem, Reem. “Modest Declines in Positive Views of ‘Socialism’ and ‘Capitalism’ in U.S.” Pew Research Center – U.S. Politics & Policy. Pew Research Center, September 19, 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/modest-declines-in-positive-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism-in-u-s/.
   1. This source was useful for a piece of information that helped provide the impetus for this research kit. I am not entirely sure if this is a primary of secondary source, so I included it here
6. “History, B.A.” Program: History, B.A. – James Madison University – Acalog ACMS™. Accessed December 15, 2022. https://catalog.jmu.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=50&poid=21315&returnto=2573.
   1. Similar to the previous source, this one was useful for giving me one piece of information that helped with the impetus. It is also not clear if this is a primary or secondary source, so it is included here.

Secondary Sources Annotated Bibliography

1. Purcell, Thomas. “THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF VENEZUELA’S BOLIVARIAN COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT: A CRITIQUE.” Science & Society 75, no. 4 (2011): 567–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41290193 
   1. This source helped me define Bolivarianism, but did not provide anything else.
2. Sanoja, Pedro. “Ideology, Institutions and Ideas: Explaining Political Change in Venezuela.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 28, no. 3 (2009): 394–410. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27734175.
   1. This source helped me define Bolivarianism, and contributed a lot of information about its creation and doctrine. 

Glossary

1. Bolivarianism- the branch of socialism popularized by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, believing in cooperativism and broader socialist principles. Definition found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/41290193 
2. Hugo Chavez- The President of Venezuela from 1999-2013. Instituted Bolivarianism in Venezuela and pioneered the rewriting of the Venezuela Constitution in 1999. Definition found from information at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27734175.
3. Caracas- The capital city Venezuela, where much of the protest and social change was seen before Chavez’s election happened, and where Chavez governed from. Definitions found mostly from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41222679 and http://www.jstor.org/stable/26167841. 
4. Cooperativismo– a political ideal that prioritizes communities working together. Bolivarianism under Chavez incorporated this greatly into policies. Definition found from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41290193 and http://www.jstor.org/stable/27734175.